In TBC same thing happened with badge gear and removal of attunements people could skip most of TK/SSC and jump into BT in the late part of the expansion.

Those vendors were released when SWP was released. Basically the last 3 months of tBC. The beginning of the end, so to speak. It was the beginning of the current system and the worst thing that happened to wow.

Originally Posted by Thylacine

As is common when I read Fencers’ comments, I completely agree with them.

If you’re looking for the more traditional MMO experience that WoW moved away from at the launch of WotLK, then Rift is what you’re looking for assuming you have the specs to run it. WoW is simply aimed at too many people for all of them to be truly satisfied, and Trion aren’t hamstrung by such diverse demands.

Don’t listen to naysayers who complain about Rift. It’s a great game, if that’s the type of game you’re looking for – easily the best of its type. What it doesn’t do is provide all the time killing activities that fit nicely into small chunks of down time and don’t really have any impact on your character, but can be fun.

I quit Rift when they nerfed T2 dungeons. A clear sign of the wow virus.

Future tiers MAY or maynot be linear. Going by cata and wrath it will probably go back to segmented. but at present it is linear for MOP which is nice.

You misunderstand, linear progression means that the next tier picks up where the old left off, generally it was done with a 13 level increase in i-lvl. Raiding within the tier is generally linear due to being one instance but can take other forms with multiple raids but in the bigger picture that's irrelevant to the linear vs segmented discussion.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

On point two its just an asumption, the big subscriber loss as you call it. There is no real hard numbers of the exact amount of people raiding. I doubt its as high as you think. The point of doing content when its released is the challenge. If you cant do it while its current and can only do it while it was nerfed thats not my problem. Get motivated or wait/get out tbh.

Which is why I said personally I think.

In addition to this, I quit when the buff rolled out in DS hence got deprived of the content that was aimed for me, why heroics raids needs to be nerfed at all eludes me, we had 6/8 hc progression when the buff rolled out, with 2 days a week raiding, why do you think it's ok that we got deprived of our content?

Originally Posted by khalltusk

Ill explain something to you which you seem to not even realise. You have only true linear progression in TBC, vanilla only had partial linear progression (forced progression) its a bit weird ill explain.

The gear progression is still linear no matter how you try to twist and turn it, you had to do A to do B to do C unless you where exceptionally skilled where you could possibly skip some content, attunements only forced this behavior, something that gear progression and player power forced any way.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

So as you can see your "linear progression obsession" is flawed.

Which can be fixed, I have even suggested partial solutions in this very thread, you argue based on how vanilla and BC was instead of how you could do it if you where to go back to linear progression with todays solutions and in game systems. And segmented progression has it's flaws to, no system will ever be perfect.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 11:27 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Ituhippi

Bluntly put, who cares? I rather take more content for me, than know that other random people get to do some super hardcore content I'll probably never bother with and have some special shinies to show for it.

But you're not getting more content, you get the same content over and over again just less of it. And to be fair I don't think anyone argues against Blizzard adding more content to the game outside of raiding, perhaps something more fitting to you if you don't want to make the effort to raid.

idk if id call the cloud serpents and lorewalkers a rep grind, considering on day 1 there were already lvl 90s riding around on cloud serpents and flying discs. the tillers and the anglers are def grinds though.

whether or not the cloud serpent is more grindy once theres more competition idk but right now people are getting them within a days work

Cloud serpents is now. there was a bug that allowed eggs to spawn every 3-5 minutes and they just ran around collecting them. There's no way you can get it in a day now unless youre on a dead realm with no competition, but with an hour respawn on them its would be damned hard to get all the eggs you need

You misunderstand, linear progression means that the next tier picks up where the old left off, generally it was done with a 13 level increase in i-lvl. Raiding within the tier is generally linear due to being one instance but can take other forms with multiple raids but in the bigger picture that's irrelevant to the linear vs segmented discussion.

Which is why I said personally I think.

The gear progression is still linear no matter how you try to twist and turn it, you had to do A to do B to do C unless you where exceptionally skilled where you could possibly skip some content, attunements only forced this behavior, something that gear progression and player power forced any way.

Which can be fixed, I have even suggested partial solutions in this very thread, you argue based on how vanilla and BC was instead of how you could do it if you where to go back to linear progression with todays solutions and in game systems. And segmented progression has it's flaws to, no system will ever be perfect.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 11:27 AM ----------

But you're not getting more content, you get the same content over and over again just less of it. And to be fair I don't think anyone argues against Blizzard adding more content to the game outside of raiding, perhaps something more fitting to you if you don't want to make the effort to raid.

ive never said it was perfect. You also gloss over the fact the progression is the EXACT same now but there are ways of helping close the gap with the badge gear. The progression still stands BUT for LFR and some normal modes you can skip them and go to a higher tier but a LOT of time would have passed at this point. All this does is allow people to bring up alts or get into the game at a later time and date and then get geared up a bit quicker so they have a chance of getting into the current content. It doesnt affect you negatively only in a postive manner. you just fail to see this. (imagine having to constantly steal people from other guilds like in the old days I dont want that to happen at the rate it did back then)

I also dont misunderstand not at all I wasnt going into the item level debate as there are many factors. The item level only increased at that low and even rate BECAUSE there were no different difficulties. People want rewards from raiding. You cannot give a raider the same reward for all the levels of difficulty. Not many people would bother doing it otherwise. You still have linear progression you do normal then heroic then the next tier you do normal then heroic the gear you get from current normal and previous/heroic and normal helps you clear the current content. You just dislike it, thats all.

I do agree though that its a silly system. Allow me to elaborate. Ulduar, oh ulduar how I miss thee. You had on DAY 1 the opportunity to do hardmodes. Wether you can do them or not was up to your raid (and their gear/skill level and amount of practice) I wish that the current system would go away. On day 1 allow people to enable the hardmode of the boss (wether thats selecting it in the UI or doing something in the encounter to enable I dont care but give us the option from day 1)

That alone would help a lot of things. I think for me a good solution to raiding might be,

There is only normal mode enabled when you enter the instance but you have to enable hardmode either via UI or some in game mechanic is required. Hardmodes give better quality loot and some UNIQUE loot as in 1 or 2 different items per boss nothing major but it gives that extra incentive to try and do that hardmode. There should also be at least 1 hardmode only boss per tier (I personally love the idea of unlocking a boss like this) its not to cut other players out but a goody bag to players who complete hardmodes and gives them an extra challenge.

LFR should be as it is it works fine although i'd be up for it being on a same lockout as normal raiding or at least delay it like they have in MOP to help with the abuse it gets from other raiders.

no attunements, no requirement to kill a previous tier before you move on (I like it but i know it wont work large scale) allow people to get badge/dungeon loot from other sources so they can get geared to a level that they can stand a chance of getting into the raids (like it is now).

You also gloss over the fact the progression is the EXACT same now but there are ways of helping close the gap with the badge gear.

No it isn't.

In TBC to raid Sunwell you had to gear up via Karazhan, then SSC/TK, then BT/MH, and finally you were able to raid Sunwell.

After TBC to raid ICC or DS, you merely do dungeons to get the last tier of gear, and proceed to DS. And that ofc is ignoring the LFR tool.

That's basically the difference between linear and segmented. Linear requires you to do all that has gone before, segmented allows you to short cut and towards the end of an expansion makes early content irrelevant, though you could also argue that it is laborious to have to grind through previous tiers in order to experience the current content too I suppose. Personally I would rather see all the content than skip some, but that's my personal preference.

In TBC to raid Sunwell you had to gear up via Karazhan, then SSC/TK, then BT/MH, and finally you were able to raid Sunwell.

After TBC to raid ICC or DS, you merely do dungeons to get the last tier of gear, and proceed to DS. And that ofc is ignoring the LFR tool.

That's basically the difference between linear and segmented. Linear requires you to do all that has gone before, segmented allows you to short cut and towards the end of an expansion makes early content irrelevant, though you could also argue that it is laborious to have to grind through previous tiers in order to experience the current content too I suppose. Personally I would rather see all the content than skip some, but that's my personal preference.

you've jumped into the wrong part of my posts my friend. read my earlier ones it already answered that

Edit I have the quote for you* TBC had quests forcing you to clear raids before you could move to the next.
Vanilla/cata/wrath (with the exception of malygos) required no raids before to be cleared before you could clear the next. Only dungeon attunements for some raids.

now the 2nd line heres a bit of info. the main difference between Vanilla and wrath/Cata was that you can get gear from outside raids to help you get into those raids. It mainly helps Alts and players returning to the game and NEW players. If you raid it wont really help you much unless you've got bad luck with drops. Attunements aside from onyxia in vanilla were very simple to get (nax one was a bit of a pain if you didnt have the rep) there were no raid to raid attunements only dungeon to raid attunements in vanilla.

oh and on your sunwell part, you're not entirely right. You could get ZA and badge gear and get enough gear by this point to jump into a TK/SSC guild at the least or if you were lucky enough into a BT guild. if you had raided then you would know (or maybe you forgot :P) Earlier in the expact when the attunements were in place there was no way you could have done that.

Will another game go there? I think the answer is probably yes. What you really have to ask yourself is, "Will going there kill that game?" If 95% of the player based hits max level and then can't complete anything the forum outrage would be palpable. That probably wouldn't have been the case 6 years ago... but times have changed. Expectations have changed.

The buff hit DS when my guild was at 6/8 heroic progression as we only raided 2 days a week hence deprived me of content, I read several posters that only raided normal that felt just as cheated as well. Now if heroic raids stop being nerfed I'd agree with you that we're not deprived of content.

You quote all my post except the part wheer i said that Heroic Raids should not be nerfed besides little tweaks, at least not while they are current content, which would solved the problem.

In this tier they are trying something different for example. Progressively opening of raids, LFR raids will not be completely opened untill NOVEMBER and since i dont see much powerfull trinkets or weapons in LFR like in DS, that should leave LFR outside of the "have to do it by force" part. That is an improvement.

They are trying to fix the problem for eveyone, going back to TBC is giving everything to one group and nothing to the other, they are trying to give things both everyone, and IMO they are getting close to it.

you've jumped into the wrong part of my posts my friend. read my earlier ones it already answered that

Edit I have the quote for you* TBC had quests forcing you to clear raids before you could move to the next.
Vanilla/cata/wrath (with the exception of malygos) required no raids before to be cleared before you could clear the next. Only dungeon attunements for some raids.

now the 2nd line heres a bit of info. the main difference between Vanilla and wrath/Cata was that you can get gear from outside raids to help you get into those raids. It mainly helps Alts and players returning to the game and NEW players. If you raid it wont really help you much unless you've got bad luck with drops. Attunements aside from onyxia in vanilla were very simple to get (nax one was a bit of a pain if you didnt have the rep) there were no raid to raid attunements only dungeon to raid attunements in vanilla.

oh and on your sunwell part, you're not entirely right. You could get ZA and badge gear and get enough gear by this point to jump into a TK/SSC guild at the least or if you were lucky enough into a BT guild. if you had raided then you would know (or maybe you forgot :P) Earlier in the expact when the attunements were in place there was no way you could have done that.

That's simply untrue.

The sequence went like this:
[Regular dungeons][Karazhan][Heroic dungeons][SSC][TK]

It wasn't until SWP was released, that they allowed players to gear up outside of raids and again, biggest mistake they ever made. Subscriptions are proof of this.

Edit: I think I didn't fully understand what I was replying to, but I'll still leave it. You know, for my greatgreat grandchildren.

All this does is allow people to bring up alts or get into the game at a later time and date and then get geared up a bit quicker so they have a chance of getting into the current content. It doesnt affect you negatively only in a postive manner.

To get a new character in to DS LFR took me less than 10 hours of game play after hitting 85, that's skipping all previous raid content, if you can't see how this is bad for the game as a whole I really don't know what to say.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

you just fail to see this.

Disagreeing isn't the same as failing to see.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

imagine having to constantly steal people from other guilds like in the old days I dont want that to happen at the rate it did back then

It's no difference now nor was it in Wrath, people move on to better guilds if they feel benefited by it, guilds care less these days about poaching players compared to vanilla when transfers had a long cool down. Blizzard loves to use that statement when linear progression is discussed though.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

I also dont misunderstand not at all I wasnt going into the item level debate as there are many factors. The item level only increased at that low and even rate BECAUSE there were no different difficulties. People want rewards from raiding. You cannot give a raider the same reward for all the levels of difficulty. Not many people would bother doing it otherwise. You still have linear progression you do normal then heroic then the next tier you do normal then heroic the gear you get from current normal and previous/heroic and normal helps you clear the current content. You just dislike it, thats all.

What you describe is how Blizzard treats it, you see it can't be 3 difficulty settings and content at the same time, the way it is now all 3 are used as content where the players are herded through all over time, using them as true difficulty settings would mean that you would do T10 heroic -> T11 heroic -> T12 heroic, using last tier end boss as attunement to enter the next tier. Using pure difficulty settings would also remove the huge gap in i-levels between tiers as you could overlap the i-lvls.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

I do agree though that its a silly system. Allow me to elaborate. Ulduar, oh ulduar how I miss thee. You had on DAY 1 the opportunity to do hardmodes. Wether you can do them or not was up to your raid (and their gear/skill level and amount of practice) I wish that the current system would go away. On day 1 allow people to enable the hardmode of the boss (wether thats selecting it in the UI or doing something in the encounter to enable I dont care but give us the option from day 1)

Agreed.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

There is only normal mode enabled when you enter the instance but you have to enable hardmode either via UI or some in game mechanic is required. Hardmodes give better quality loot and some UNIQUE loot as in 1 or 2 different items per boss nothing major but it gives that extra incentive to try and do that hardmode. There should also be at least 1 hardmode only boss per tier (I personally love the idea of unlocking a boss like this) its not to cut other players out but a goody bag to players who complete hardmodes and gives them an extra challenge.

Ulduar was great which is basically what you want.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

LFR should be as it is it works fine although i'd be up for it being on a same lockout as normal raiding or at least delay it like they have in MOP to help with the abuse it gets from other raiders.

It would kill LFR if they shared lockout, way to many are carried in it by players that surely would be locked, not that I'd mind as LFR is a horrible idea to begin with.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

no attunements, no requirement to kill a previous tier before you move on (I like it but i know it wont work large scale) allow people to get badge/dungeon loot from other sources so they can get geared to a level that they can stand a chance of getting into the raids (like it is now).

I like attunements, they would be great in todays WoW where you could make them account bound, preferably they should be 1-5 man based though to give the story and something to do while waiting for the next raid. Instead of pushing players towards raiding I'd much rather Blizzard make more 1-5 man content, solo dungeons, long hard quest chains with good rewards and so on, give players options instead of telling them that they want to raid and LFR is the way they can do it.

The sequence went like this:
[Regular dungeons][Karazhan][Heroic dungeons][SSC][TK]

It wasn't until SWP was released, that they allowed players to gear up outside of raids and again, biggest mistake they ever made. Subscriptions are proof of this.

no it wasnt untrue you simply didnt read it properly.

you said when SWP was released I replied about that and said you could get into it via this method.

also your sequence is so WRONG its laughable.

IT was dungeons - get rep for heroic, heroic dungeons karazan then ssc tk bt. (not counting swp as this was very late)

when swp it opened up badge gear combined with doing some ZA (and kara runs) you could get into a TK and ssc guild as they removed their attunements and the attunements from BT and hyjal as well. You clearly dont remember or never did this content.

also the subscriptions were at their highest during tbc and wrath when this model was introduced. Clearly you don't know what you are talking about.

you said when SWP was released I replied about that and said you could get into it via this method.

also your sequence is so WRONG its laughable.

IT was dungeons - get rep for heroic, heroic dungeons karazan then ssc tk bt. (not counting swp as this was very late)

when swp it opened up badge gear combined with doing some ZA (and kara runs) you could get into a TK and ssc guild as they removed their attunements and the attunements from BT and hyjal as well. You clearly dont remember or never did this content.

also the subscriptions were at their highest during tbc and wrath when this model was introduced. Clearly you don't know what you are talking about.

I already commented on reading it wrong in my post. But.

I am absolutely not wrong about the sequence of dungeons. ABSOLUTELY NOT. I'm not saying that you needed to clear Karazhan before heroics, but heroic shattered halls, or heroic shadow labs, you definitely wanted to have some parts karazhan gear. No contest.

tBC had the highest subs, wotlk went down, cata went further down.

Zul aman wasn't nerfed until the last patch before the expansion. Before that nerf, you couldn't "just" jump into ZA.

You quote all my post except the part wheer i said that Heroic Raids should not be nerfed besides little tweaks, at least not while they are current content, which would solved the problem.

In this tier they are trying something different for example. Progressively opening of raids, LFR raids will not be completely opened untill NOVEMBER and since i dont see much powerfull trinkets or weapons in LFR like in DS, that should leave LFR outside of the "have to do it by force" part. That is an improvement.

They are trying to fix the problem for eveyone, going back to TBC is giving everything to one group and nothing to the other, they are trying to give things both everyone, and IMO they are getting close to it.

Artificial gating is one of the worst designs ever used in a MMO, that's all I'm going to say about that.

The linear progression used in BC still gave you more content, or at least content for longer periods of time unless you belonged to the top 5%, the shortcomings of how it used to work in BC could easily be solved within todays WoW hence be beneficial to most players, only once benefited by the current raid system are people who want to clear it once in LFR and then never go back and people wanting loot for no effort, everyone else lose out in one way or another.

That's the point. Even the hardest T2 weren't punishing. GW2, those are punishing. T2 was a matter of skill.

T2 dungeons are not mastermode dungeons FYI they aren't avaliable via LFD since pugs fail hard on them. T2 Rift dungons don't exist anymore it's regular or expert which are in fact easy as they are designed for more casual non-raiding player base. Those nerfs you speak of are over a year ago it helps to keep current on your game knowledge if you want to debate. Anyways it's a mute point at this point since there's an xpac dropping in 5 weeks.

GW2 dungeons bad design is what makes them difficult nothing more. PVE is not Anet's strong point I've played both games so I've got "current" experience on both games. Just saying.

To get a new character in to DS LFR took me less than 10 hours of game play after hitting 85, that's skipping all previous raid content, if you can't see how this is bad for the game as a whole I really don't know what to say.

Disagreeing isn't the same as failing to see.

It's no difference now nor was it in Wrath, people move on to better guilds if they feel benefited by it, guilds care less these days about poaching players compared to vanilla when transfers had a long cool down. Blizzard loves to use that statement when linear progression is discussed though.

What you describe is how Blizzard treats it, you see it can't be 3 difficulty settings and content at the same time, the way it is now all 3 are used as content where the players are herded through all over time, using them as true difficulty settings would mean that you would do T10 heroic -> T11 heroic -> T12 heroic, using last tier end boss as attunement to enter the next tier. Using pure difficulty settings would also remove the huge gap in i-levels between tiers as you could overlap the i-lvls.

Agreed.

Ulduar was great which is basically what you want.

It would kill LFR if they shared lockout, way to many are carried in it by players that surely would be locked, not that I'd mind as LFR is a horrible idea to begin with.

I like attunements, they would be great in todays WoW where you could make them account bound, preferably they should be 1-5 man based though to give the story and something to do while waiting for the next raid. Instead of pushing players towards raiding I'd much rather Blizzard make more 1-5 man content, solo dungeons, long hard quest chains with good rewards and so on, give players options instead of telling them that they want to raid and LFR is the way they can do it.

I do agree about attunements but having done this raiding scene since the get go I know its a ball ache to recruit people (same as player sniping if you did recruitment in 40man you had a LOT of churn and it was harder for the medium guilds to get into the very top tier of content as a lot of players were taken in by the very top guilds. In tbc my guild was at the top tier of raiding we started a bit late but had cleared sunwell before wrath think we got a server 2nd! there was churn still and in wrath we noticed it far less than before until totc came out.... urgh

True lfr lockout would kill it BUT i guess a delay like a week or two would be best. LFR is a great tool for players who cant raid in a normal guild. The gear should be of a far lower quality.

About the DS part, its the final raid of the expac. They wanted to get all the players to see this finale to the game. Thats a good thing, I do agree it was rather quick BUT you're comparing someone like your self who would probably steam role their way to gearing a character to a new player who might not know or have the time. its subjective at best.

But as you can see I would like the option to do away with the current heroic system and just have it where you can access hardmodes on day 1. Leave it up to the players to see if they can get into the content. With adding a boss or two for heroic only per tier thats ADDING content to the game and even if you nerf the content later on in the patch cycle (when the best guilds have had it on farm for a long time and everyone else is struggling) I see no problem with this. It doesnt affect my progression never has.

T2 dungeons are not mastermode dungeons FYI they aren't avaliable via LFD since pugs fail hard on them. T2 Rift dungons don't exist anymore it's regular or expert which are in fact easy as they are designed for more casual non-raiding player base. Those nerfs you speak of are over a year ago it helps to keep current on your game knowledge if you want to debate. Anyways it's a mute point at this point since there's an xpac dropping in 5 weeks.

GW2 dungeons bad design is what makes them difficult nothing more. PVE is not Anet's strong point I've played both games so I've got "current" experience on both games. Just saying.

Dude, moderator, what are we arguing about again? I quit when they nerfed T2, because it smelled like wow mentality. Is there something wrong with your ears? I don't care that they crawled back from it.